Michael Clark Company: Come, Been and Gone – Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield

Choreographer: Michael Clark

Reviewer: Audrey Pointer

The Public Reviews Rating:

The Michael Clark Company returns to the Lyceum, Sheffield as part of the Danceworks season with their latest work “come, been and gone”. Scottish born Clark, formerly a dancer with Ballet Rambert, launched his own contemporary dance company in 1984. This production takes its name from a phrase in David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” and Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed are key inspirations.

The show consists of three parts: a piece called “Swamp” and the two parts of “come, been and gone”. The former has music by Bruce Gilbert and Wire, some of which is experimental noise in the same vein as Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music”. After an interval, we have the first part of “come, been and gone” with music from The Velvet Underground, which, though over forty years old, still has shock value that the dance routines use to full effect. After another interval, the second part has one track from Iggy Pop and several from Bowie.

There is no set but the back wall is used as a screen for projected still images, video of Bowie singing Heroes and coloured backdrops. Charles Atlas is responsible for slick lighting design. The costumes by BodyMap, Stevie Stewart and Clark himself are often eye-catching, particularly a silver outfit, a costume spiked with syringes and the bizarre attire worn by Clark in a cameo appearance, supplemented by a large flexible plastic pipe. The music – produced before the dancers were born – is of a time and of a piece, which helps convey a unity through which the choreography can speak.

Dancers Nathan Cornwell, Kate Coyne, Melissa Hetherington, Oxana Panchenko, Benjamin Warbis, Simon Williams are graceful masters of their art even when their movements are angular, strange looking and awkward. With faces portraying no emotion and the dancers often apparently locked in their own worlds, they still manage to convey a sense of narrative flow, albeit fractured and abstract at times and highlight the rich imagery of the music through physical movement or gesture.

Clark is onto a winner by virtue of the soundtrack alone. When you add fresh, innovative and engaging choreography, performed by some of the best young dancers around, you earn the applause that the Sheffield crowd gave after every part of this entertaining show.